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May 25, 2010

HP 3000 work migrates to India

Several HP 3000 development jobs have surfaced in Chennai, TN. But before you get your resume ready to send to Tennessee, or consider a contract for Chennai, take a moment to Google the city. It's in the Tamil Nadu state of India. There's a growing stream of HP 3000 jobs well offshore of North America. India is 11 time zones away from corporations on the US West coast. But the industrious Indians have been working to take on HP 3000 application maintenance for companies who have lost their 3000 developer.

Just look at the skill set requested by CMMi. It reads like a inventory of popular 3000 tools and environments. (We think that "VSAM" is really KSAM.)

Experience in design and development of HP3000 based applications. Experience in COBOL and VSAM. Good knowledge in various tools like SUPRTOOL, HPEDIT, QEDIT, HP Browse, Hpsearch, HP Link Editor, Query, FCOPY, Conman, Arranger and Maestro used in HP 3000 system.

Of course, a development company that is struggling to get the name of KSAM correct would be just learning the environment. Which could encourage a 3000 customer to look closer to North America at one of the many providers of application support for MPE/iX apps.

A few of the leading candidates? Speedware, MB Foster, the Support Group, and Pivital all manage 3000 apps of one sort or another. A couple of these companies also support transition and migration projects, while the Support Group has an allied company in Entsgo to help a company go to a non-3000 environment.

Indian technology companies have been working in the 3000 sector for more than a decade. Back in the '90s a development company called Blue Star -- which at least knew how to spell VPlus -- was exhibiting at the Interex conferences. That was an era when the offshore concept was still in a rising mode. HP established a 3000 lab in Bangalore in the middle of the decade. It featured hard-working Indian engineers who spoke some of the hardest-to-understand English I have ever taken down for a story.

But if the Indian resources are coming up short on comprehension and specifications, they can always compete on price. The Indian economy still operates on a 20 percent pay-scale of North American firms. A 3000 site with no budget for sustaining 3000 operations, and no one on-site to even inventory the applications -- they could do worse than hiring CMMi. But the value of any dollar spent with novice 3000 resources is deceiving. You can believe you're getting help that can dissolve into extra time spent communicating or specifying.

There's not really any jingoistic, xenophobic prejudice in keeping your app development and maintenance inside the 3000 community. 3000 homesteaders, even if they're of the interim breed, need to evaluate any candidate for hiring sustaining operations. The worst thing to do is delay that kind of sustaining plan. But offshore help might not be a lot better. TN is as far way from Tennessee as Arranger is from Adager. They sound similar, but there's a half-world of difference.

Comments

HP 3000 work migrates to India

Several HP 3000 development jobs have surfaced in Chennai, TN. But before you get your resume ready to send to Tennessee, or consider a contract for Chennai, take a moment to Google the city. It's in the Tamil Nadu state of India. There's a growing stream of HP 3000 jobs well offshore of North America. India is 11 time zones away from corporations on the US West coast. But the industrious Indians have been working to take on HP 3000 application maintenance for companies who have lost their 3000 developer.

Just look at the skill set requested by CMMi. It reads like a inventory of popular 3000 tools and environments. (We think that "VSAM" is really KSAM.)

Experience in design and development of HP3000 based applications. Experience in COBOL and VSAM. Good knowledge in various tools like SUPRTOOL, HPEDIT, QEDIT, HP Browse, Hpsearch, HP Link Editor, Query, FCOPY, Conman, Arranger and Maestro used in HP 3000 system.

Of course, a development company that is struggling to get the name of KSAM correct would be just learning the environment. Which could encourage a 3000 customer to look closer to North America at one of the many providers of application support for MPE/iX apps.

Bruce, thanks for the enlightenment about those CMMi tool names. I hadn't heard of Arranger, just figured the "ger" was common to Adager. A Google search did't reveal the inner workings of Maestro. I didn't do much better than CMMi on that one :)

As for VSAM vs. KSAM vs. VPlus, we're both trying to read the chai powder to guess what the listing really meant. Since you had three of the four letters in common, you're probably guessing closest. I hope the prospective customers will be looking this closely.